Abstract
Treating waste as a resource can provide many social and economic benefits and develop policies accordingly. In this study, the relationship between municipal waste, income, human capital, material footprint, consumption and urban population is analyzed with panel data models within the framework of the Kuznets curve, using the data for the period of 1995 – 2018 for 22 OECD countries. Various economic, demographic and human variables that are thought to have an impact on municipal waste generation were added to the models created with cubic functional forms. The analysis results show that the relationship between municipal waste and income is inverted N-shaped. In line with expectations, the increase in human capital reduces the amount of waste per capita. The urbanization rate causes a higher increase in the amount of waste per capita compared to the population. Real consumption per capita and material footprint similarly have a positive effect on waste. The findings have calculated the first and second-order conditions for an inverted N-shaped relationship and verified that this relationship is mathematically valid.
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The datasets used in the study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
Notes
It is thought that environmental quality will deteriorate, as the use of more materials with increased production will lead to more waste.
Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkiye, UK.
For a detailed review, see Sinha et al. (2019).
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Hİ, data curation, methodology, writing original draft, formal analysis; NÇ, investigation, supervision, validation.
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İçen, H., Çil, N. Investigating municipal waste Kuznets curve for 22 OECD countries. Environ Monit Assess 195, 1506 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-12108-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-12108-6